


Space Craft

by mercutiglo



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Lots of Free Time, Rita basically becomes a grandma, crafting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-17
Updated: 2019-01-17
Packaged: 2019-10-11 14:57:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17449199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mercutiglo/pseuds/mercutiglo
Summary: Juno left for a month on a case, and Rita isn't entirely sure what to do with all of this free time.(A birthday present for Oliver)





	Space Craft

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thewiredgalaxy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewiredgalaxy/gifts).



Mistah Steel said he was going to be gone for a full month on a case for the Kanagawas. Why he still continued to do work for them, Rita would never understand, but it meant that he was getting paid well, and so he was able to pay Rita even though she didn’t need to come into the office for a full month, considering it would be unfair to her if he didn’t. He said that when he mentioned this to Cass Kanagawa, she said that Rita would be taken care of. Which caused him to then say that if she died, he had Cass saying that recorded to show to the police, and he’d make sure she got a nice funeral. 

 

What neither of them had expected was for to be a transfer to her account on the first day Mistah Steel was gone for 500,000 creds from an “Hidden Account.” Rita tried to call Mistah Steel to ask if there was some sort of mistake, but his comms didn’t seemed to be turned on. She couldn’t be sure if that was just due to his ineptitude or due to conditions set up by Miss Kanagawa for the case that she had him gone on, but it was certainly more money than Rita had ever had in her account in her life. She couldn’t be sure if it was real or not, or some sort of test of whether or not she could be trusted or something like that, so what she did was she went about her normal day off. She called to make sure that no calls had come into the office, and then sat herself on her couch with a bowl of popcorn and a cup of hot cocoa to watch some of her favorite streams all day. She thought about the possibility of taking on some freelance type coding jobs while she had all this free time, another way to make some creds while Mistah Steel was away, and in case this interesting transfer of creds disappeared in the morning. She ended up deciding to wait and see if the money was still there tomorrow before she would decide on whether or not she needed to look into some temporary coding jobs, and watched streams until she fell asleep on her couch with the streams still on. 

  
  


The next morning, the transfer was for only 100,000 creds, but it came with a note attached to it: “This isn’t a test. We told Juno that you’d be taken care of. Explore some hobbies. Go to a spa. Do whatever you want. Without you, Juno wouldn’t have even known how to answer our call, and for that, we thank you immensely. - C. Kanagawa” She wasn’t sure which one of the Kanagawa twins that had come from, considering they both had names that started with the letter C, but any thought she had of coding the rest of her month away went out the door when she read that message. She assumed it must’ve been Miss Kanagawa, considering that the words “taken care of” didn’t result in her lookin at the inside of a coffin for the rest of time. Or an urn from incineration or in pieces or whatever Mistah Kanagawa could come up with. 

  
  


That first day, she decided to treat it like a regular weekend day just one more day, only this time, she paid for one of those fancy premium stream services. She was opened up to a whole new variety of streams, some that she hadn’t even heard of before. Sure, she had seen a good number of them because finding a good illegal download of a stream wasn’t all that hard, especially when you’re not a Mistah Steel with computers, but it was nice to not have to navigate the variety of ads and fake links and all those things that are just like little flies when she was just trying to find the next episode as quickly as possible. She ordered pizza, since she could splurge and get whatever kind she wanted, and spent another day not really up to much since she could take leisure in whatever she wanted to do for a whole 30 days, which meant she still had four full weeks to do other things, what’s wrong with some streams?

  
  


On the third day, there wasn’t another transfer, probably since the Kanagawas had realized that she was no longer scared to spend the money she was given, but she still had 600,000 creds, considering she hadn’t even quite blown through everything she already had in her account. She called to make sure that there were no messages for the office, and then as she opened up some leftover pizza, she wondered what she was actually going to do for the next four weeks. She couldn’t just sit and watch streams all day every day, that just wouldn’t be good for her. She thought about it. What were some things that she had always wanted to do, but couldn’t because she either didn’t have enough money or because she always had to be at work? She decided she would go for a walk, since she needed to at least get out of her house. She walked around her neighborhood for about an hour, finding all sorts of things that she had never really noticed on her way to work before, before she found the place that would provide her with endless entertainment for the next four weeks. Space Craft. She walked in and was dazzled by the different types of things that she could get there and was content to spend many many hours there, which may or may not have been what she did anyways. She never realized just how many things there were out there in the world of crafting, considering most of it requires spending so much time on things that aren’t really all that useful and also why knit yourself something when you can just pay a lot less for a factory made something and also not spend so much time making it. 

 

At the end of two hours of shopping, and a solid amount of money from the Kanagawas later, Rita walked out of Space Craft with two arms laden down with craft supplies and a receipt that could have rolled the whole way back to Rita’s house. Those bags contained various supplies, various needles and hooks for cross stitching, crocheting, and knitting, yarn and thread and cloth, paint palettes and colored pencils and every size brush she could find, a dozen or more notebooks and paper pads, pens and drawing tablets and at least three bullet journals, enough beads and wire to create a beaded cover for her entire house, so many different kinds of supplies. There were enough things in those bags that she could entertain herself for an entire year.

 

So of course as soon as she got home, she dropped all of the bags off and grabbed the keys for her car before heading off to the Marnes and Noble bookstore. By the time she left there, another sizable dent had been taken out of the Kanagawa transfers, and she had bought all kinds of books. Biographies on people she thought sounded interesting, just about every single hobby book that she could find including instructionals for some of the things that she had already bought, novels that sounded like they might be the basis for some of the cases that Mistah Steel took on, novels that made her blush when the clerk scanned them, raising their eyes at her, and a whole selection of cookbooks. More than half of them were about baking, but the others ranged from simple meals that could be cooked with little to no effort to elaborate feasts that she would almost certainly have no real use for, but that might be interesting to try every once in a while. Sure, most of this was information that she could find for free online somewhere, but she had the opportunity to buy these things, so why not do it?

  
  


Her expenditures proved to be useful when two days later, a storm hit Hyperion City hard enough to take out power to more than half of the city, including Rita’s neighborhood. Before, this was usually something that would devastate her day, considering that without any power then that meant that all of the internet servers were down as well, but she hardly even noticed that anything was amiss, only when she realized that she couldn’t turn a light on as night time fell, and even then she just moved closer to her window to do things by the light of the emergency reserve powered street light outside. 

  
  


The next day, when the power finally came back on, she was simply relieved that now she could charge her comms so that she could continue to listen to the audio streams that she had taken up listening to while she was busy perfecting her artistic skills. 

  
  


When Juno returned from whatever case he had been on with Cass, he decided to just go straight back to his apartment instead of seeing if there was anything that needed his attention at the office. Rita had presumably been continuing to at least check up on the place, and there was nothing that had arrived for him in the past month that couldn’t wait for him another few hours until after he slept. 

 

He realized he hadn’t actually asked Rita to make sure that she stopped by his place to see if there was any unexpected mail or packages - not that he really anticipated any, he just figured that was the most likely way for Nureyev to contact him - but was surprised when his apartment seemed to not be blocked off with junk mail. In fact, he could see that the lights in his apartment were actually on when he stepped up to his door, and when he placed his hand on the door knob, it was unlocked. With his other hand, he pulled out his blaster. He knew that the odds were in favor of it being Rita, but he couldn’t really take any chances, especially considering just how long he had been gone for. People notice patterns, and when he suddenly disappeared, surely there was someone trying to break in through his door.

 

When he opened the door, he was immediately struck by the smell. It was the smell of homemade pesto and something distinctly floral that he couldn’t quite put a finger on. At least until he looked and saw a jar with a deep purple candle inside of it burning on his coffee table. Which was covered in a silver doily that he had certainly never seen before. And what was that on the back of his couch a…. Quilt? Homemade? Had he had his apartment broken into by some kindly old grandmother?

 

The answer to that question shouted “Mistah Steel you’re back!” as he stood struck in the middle of the doorway. His apartment was clean, and also had…. Were those watercolors? On the walls?

 

“Rita what the hell have you done to my apartment?”

 

She wiped her hands on her apron and walked around the counter so that she could give him a big hug. “Oh Mistah Steel okay so here’s what happened.” Juno set about taking off his shoes and moving about his apartment while Rita talked, following him like a puppy. “So the Kanagawas ended up giving me a boatload of creds, I’m talking more than you or I have ever seen in my life Mistah Steel, and so I determined that since I had no need to take up different coding jobs - like I usually do when you leave for big stretches of time like this - so I could take the time for myself, since I don’t usually get all that much of a chance. And so I took a couple of days, got caught up on all my streams, and then I was sorta at a loss as to what to do with all of my newfound free time, so I went for a walk, and I ended up at Space Craft. And there were just so many different things for me to try, so I did them all! And then I went to Marnes and Noble and got a whole lotta different books on a whole buncha different ways to spend your free time, so I ended up using those with a whole lotta the stuff I got at Space Craft, and made some blankets, some candles, some soaps, some washcloths, this apron, some paintings, whole lotta different stuff, Mistah Steel. And then I also got a whole lotta cookbooks and also there was a book that I found on speed gardening, and I figured that since I had so much money from the Kanagawas, I could afford to take up some speed gardening. And so I learned that making your very own pesto is really really good, Mistah Steel, and so then since I knew you were coming back today I figured that I would take the time and come by with some of the things I made - some of the nicer ones, and there’s sort of a theme if you can’t tell by now - and also I figured that I have no idea what all you were eating on your case but just in case it was bad, some home cooked food would probably be nice. Or if you were eating really fancy stuff, maybe something a bit more simple would be nice too.” 

 

By the time she was done talking, Juno had been through each room and saw all the things that Rita had made and put in his apartment, and saw how much cleaner it was than when he had left. He was left speechless. “Rita, I….”

 

“If you don’t like all the stuff, you don’t have to keep all of it. I just figured it might help to make your apartment feel just a little more…. Cozy.” She sounded almost sad about it, the idea that Juno wouldn’t like the things she made hurting her to her core more deeply than a shot from a blaster.

 

He turned towards her. “Rita, I love all of. Thank you so much, you don’t realize how much it means that you made all of this for me.” He gave her a sweet smile. “But also I’m exhausted so let’s have dinner and I’ll tell you about the case….”

**Author's Note:**

> HAPPY BIRTHDAY OLIVER I HOPE THIS WAS THE KIND OF GOOD GOOD RITA CONTENT YOU WANTED. 
> 
> This was very fun and very based off of the cross stitching that I've been doing recently.  
> kudos/comment/subscribe if you liked it, I've been working very hard on another fic recently and then will be working on some scripts soon, so fics might be a little slower for these first few months of 2019.


End file.
